Born
on July 23, 1927, he was employed as a civilian Astronaut when he was killed
with Captain Charles Arthur Bassett II in the
crash of their T-38 jet trainer while on approach to St. Louis, Misouri,
on February 28, 1966.

He is buried in Section 4 of Arlington National
Cemetery.

One bright winter morning, the last day of
February 1966, the Gemini IX foursome checked into Ellington Air Force
Base, Texas, for flight clearance to St. Louis in two dual-seat T-38 jet
aircraft. They planned to spend several days practicing on the rendezvous
simulator at the McDonnell plant.

At Ellington, the four fliers learned that
weather in St. Louis was gloomy: 180-meter overcast, visibility 3 kilometers,
rain, and fog, with little change expected. Instrument flight rules would
be required. See called the St. Louis air traffic controllers, saying he
would see them in a couple of hours. He and Cernan discussed the different
runways at Lambert Field in St. Louis. See then climbed into the front
seat of one T-38, with Bassett easing into the back seat. Stafford and
Cernan got into the other plane. They took off from Ellington at 7:35 a.m.
See and Bassett led, with Stafford and Cernan flying wing position.

Reaching St. Louis just before 9 o'clock, See
radioed the Lambert Field control tower and learned that the overcast had
lifted to 240 meters since his earlier call, but the visibility had dropped
to 2.4 kilometers. Light snow flurries now mixed with the rain and fog.
As the aircraft descended through the overcast, the pilots found themselves
too far down the runway to land. See elected to keep the field in sight
and he circled to the left underneath the cloud cover. Stafford followed
a missed approach procedure and climbed straight ahead into the soup to
600 meters, intending to make another instrument approach. He landed safely
on his next attempt.

Meanwhile, See had continued his left turn.
The aircraft angled toward McDonnell Building 101, where technicians were
working on the very spacecraft See and Bassett were scheduled to fly. Apparently
recognizing that his sink rate was too high, See cut in his afterburners
and attempted a sharp right turn; but it was too late. The aircraft struck
the roof of the building and crashed into a courtyard. Both pilots were
killed.

NASA named a seven-man board to investigate
the accident. Led by Astronaut Alan B. Shepard, Jr., the board looked into
all aspects of the tragedy - aircraft maintenance, pilot experience, medical
histories, and weather conditions. Shepard's group listened to testimony
from everyone who had anything to say, sifted the wreckage for clues, and
drew conclusions. They found nothing wrong with the aircraft; it had functioned
properly to the moment of impact. Within the past six months, See and Bassett
had renewed their instrument flying certificates. Before and during the
flight, both men had been in good physical and mental condition, as attested
by medical examinations and by reported pre-and in-flight conversations.
Furthermore, See was reputed to be an excellent test pilot. Careful, judicious,
and technically competent, he should never have crashed at all. Weather
appeared to have been the major contributing cause, and pilot error prompted
by a desire not to lose sight of the field had carried them too low.

On Wednesday, 2 March 1966, Spacecraft No.
9, on its way to the flight dock for shipment to Cape Kennedy, passed an
American flag flying at half-mast at the McDonnell plant. The next day,
Elliot See and Charles Bassett, attended by their fellow astronauts, were
buried in Arlington National Cemetery across the Potomac from the Nation's
capital.

NASA assigned the Gemini IX prime crew positions
to Stafford and Cernan, marking the first time in the agency's manned space
flight history that a backup crew had taken over a mission. On 21 March
James Lovell and Edwin Aldrin were given the backup duties. There would
be no delay in the launch schedule.